Hansen and Bill Nye are down there intellectually polluting the atmosphere

A wildfire that began in Boulder County yesterday brought a local flare to James Hansen’s lecture on “The Venus Syndrome,” as he touched on how temperature anomalies are causing wildfires to be more frequent, more destructive, and to burn hotter. “The smoke in the room just adds another dimension,” Nye said, referring to the campfire smell that permeated the building from the recently ignited Flagstaff fire.

Hansen has absolutely no idea what he is talking about. Temperatures in Boulder have declined four degrees over the past sixty years.

He is still promoting his Venus hoax. The lapse rate on Venus is nearly identical to Earth and is nearly identical to the adiabatic lapse rate. The temperature on both planets is determined by atmospheric pressure, not the composition of the atmosphere.

25 Responses to Hansen Makes A Fool Of Himself In Boulder

He tried to pull that on me in the debate, bringing Venus up along with his drop of oil in water to show how co2 dirties the air ( Bill Nye) His lack of knowledge on why Venus is warm ( pressure) says enough. In fact if you reduced the pressure to earth, in spite of 95% plus co2, its about the same temp, which should instantly end the argument in any rational person

Surface temps are a function of the height of the tropopause (*), the adiabatic lapse rate, and the temperature at the tropopause. The last point depends on the radiative properties of the stratosphere.

(*) as in “the region of the atmosphere below which temperatures decrease with height, and above which temperatures increase with height”

“He is still promoting his Venus hoax. The lapse rate on Venus is nearly identical to Earth and is nearly identical to the adiabatic lapse rate. The temperature on both planets is determined by atmospheric pressure, not the composition of the atmosphere.”
Finally, an answer! Yes, but I say despite the clouds, it does matter to some degree that Venus is much closer and gets 9 times the solar radiation than the earth (I think). But, clearly the extreme atmospheric pressure is driving the ultra-high temps; still, if Venus was the same in all respects, except that it was in orbit as far out from the sun as Neptune, we should expect it to be colder.

Good question. Hard to find a quick answer with a quick google, other than the climate change propaganda answer from the bs artists at NASA:

Why is the atmospheric pressure so high on Venus?

Because Venus has such a dense atmosphere which is some 100 times thicker than the earth’s. Evidently, Venus is sufficiently close to the Sun that the little carbon dioxide it had in its early, Earth-like atmosphere caused the surface to warm up and leach out more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This in turn caused the atmosphere to get warmer in a so-called runaway Greenhouse Effect. Very quickly, much of the carbon dioxide that was originally trapped in the surface rocks wound up in a thick atmosphere which now regulates the surface temperature at about 882 F.

I call bullshit on the whole nasa explanation, but especially on the runaway greenhouse effect, as the earth has had huge amounts of CO2 in the past (to 7000ppm+), and thus if there was a runaway GHE, then the earth would be like Venus now. It snot.

I’m afraid that you are wrong. When in Boulder Hansen and Ney spoke to Miriam Paisner and she in turn spoke to Mother Earth. They have it straight from the source: Heat wave is proof of climate change.

I once thought Hansen was doing everything possible to promote his AGW over population rhetoric to advance his agenda consciously as a true believer. Now I am sure he is absolutely without a doubt insane. Nye is his butt kissing yes man.

Hansen is wrong again. Interesting, though,, is the fact that all commenters here seem to have missed – the energy from the sun on the surface of Venus is almost twice as much per square metre as it is on Earth, so pressure aside, that’s a hell of a lot of energy that has to be dissipated back into space. There are considerations of planetary inclination, orbital period and rotational period as well, all of which may affect the temperature on Venus.

Agreed. Especially on Venus, where the permanent cloud cover blocks the radiation. Here in the Waikato region in NZ, the difference in winter between the temperature at dawn after a cloudy night and the temperature at dawn after a clear one is about fifteen degrees Celsius. The rising CO2 concentration doesn’t appear to have affected it so far…

I believe your study “TV sets and Global Warming” is right on the money. I would wager you could get a grant for continued research. Face it, if hair spray can destroy the ozone, tvs can warm the planet. :)